


Many Waters

by rageprufrock



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what Fuji knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Many Waters

These are the things that Fuji knows:

Tezuka's arm is gone, but other parts of him remain. 

Tezuka works in internal medicine, and doesn't linger over the ghosts of his past. 

He likes the logic in medicine, the procedural order of diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.  He likes the chemistry, enjoys the logic, and feels an almost-guilty thrill at the challenge.  There is no turf beneath his feet, nor the familiar sound of a ball hitting the taut strings of a racket, but a challenge is much the same construction, regardless in what circumstance. 

It's the unexpected, everyone says.  The rehab--so expensive and strenuous, they mourn--was supposed to have healed him, prepared him.  Tezuka was supposed to be ready.  Tennis magazines profiled him nearly weekly in high school.  No one expected the most natural thing of all: that it couldn't possibly last.

Occasionally, a tennis enthusiast will light up when they recognize him, but Tezuka is stronger than excitement, and questions are always muted long before they are asked. 

He says occasionally that the eighty-hour cap on the work hours of medical students is ridiculous, and no one is ever sure whether he's talking about it being mostly useless, or restrictive to his abilities.  No one is sure whether they want to know. 

One of the other residents went to Seigaku once, long ago, too, and he tells stories, tall tales and nearly-myths.  He says that Seigaku won the nationals based entirely upon the hardheaded intellect and unrelenting force of their middle and high school tennis captain.  He says he used to make his tennis club run laps on a whim, ten, twenty, and once fifty-eight in the pouring rain.

Fuji knows all of these stories are true.

 ****

 *****

 

What is also true, is that during those fifty-eight laps in the pouring rain, Tezuka stood unmoving in the storm, and waited.  It was not, any Seigaku player who had made the run could explain, merely a punishment.  It was a message, a warning, and a challenge: Tezuka never wasted time with fools, and people who knew better did not question his authority.  He was loyal to the end, but he would not suffer idiots or mutiny.

Six people dropped out of Seigaku high's tennis club the next day.

"That was a bit excessive," Fuji said.  He was ringing out his shirt.

Tezuka wiped the dripping strands of hair from his glasses and said, "It made a point."

Tezuka is a legend to tennis players; pros know him, if only because they still, on some level, anticipate that he'll stop pretending to be a doctor and show up at a game.  There is and always will be a low-grade wariness, like no one can believe that it's really true; Tezuka Kunimistu, out of commission?

Or rather, out by choice.

This is a lie.

But it is one that Fuji is willing to tell people who ask, and people who ask never ask twice.  Fuji smiles, but only at the corners of his mouth; only four people have ever seen Fuji mean it, and only one of them remains.

 ****

 *****

 

They are still, even after all of these years, figuring each other out.

The rhythm they built on the tennis field court does not extend to the kitchen and they still bump elbows early in the morning.  No one talks about this. 

They're sharing an apartment because Tokyo is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, and Tezuka only uses the couch once a week to sleep like the dead, anyway. 

"You're scheduled for another match next week," Tezuka will say, and the dark circles under his eyes are like trophies for him.  So many shining gold reminders of what can never be that Fuji remembers helping Tezuka pack and mail away; Seigaku wanted them more than Tezuka.

And Fuji will nod and drink his tea.  "Atobe might be there," he will say, and Tezuka will make a noncommittal noise.

This is the way they are: detached.

Fuji likes to watch though, and wishes, very far away in his mind, that he could make Tezuka collapse, boneless, defenseless, and submitting to the curling hands of sleep like the fluorescent hum of the hospital does every week.

In a way, Fuji understands the draw of Tezuka's self-imposed eighty-hour exhaustion.  Watching the world fly out of control is every kind of glorious weightlessness, and Fuji imagines that when Tezuka dreams on Thursday afternoons, he dreams of night, and stars like rivers in the sky.

 ****

 *****

 

They fit perfectly, and yet are wholly incorrect.

Tezuka never lets the milk go bad, and always remembers to buy the groceries.  Fuji knows exactly what Tezuka reads, and when to pick up the dry-cleaning.  They are both hideous bachelors and have difficulty dressing themselves for occasions labeled "dress casual," and sometimes, they have girlfriends who help them. 

The girlfriends never last.

Tezuka, strangely enough, has had more luck than Fuji.

"It's just a little..." Fuji says.  "Wrong" is silent.

Tezuka orders Whiskey Sours and Fuji drinks Fuzzy Navels.  The light in the bar is low and the noise is high; it's not their kind of place but then again, this isn't their kind of life.

 ****

 *****

 

Fuji wonders sometimes how it all happened, what became of the years between that first smooth, silent meeting and the intervening adventures in high school.

He asks Tezuka, and waits, because Tezuka knows the world.

"You reorganize," Tezuka says simply. 

Tezuka is wearing dark blue scrubs in a diner where all the med students disappear to when they have time; there are girls here, pretty girls and good girls, who are looking his way with a hungry sort of wistfulness in their eyes.  Fuji thinks, if only, and thinks to tell Tezuka that if he looked back, maybe it would work.

"Reorganize," Fuji repeats.

He thinks, but he never does; Tezuka's attention is important.

Tezuka nods, and cocks one brow.  "Shifts things.  Your brain files away all the unpleasantness, and pushes the good memories to the forefront.  It's one of the ways that our psychology  ensures survival."  He looks at his wristwatch and his face hardens.  "I have to get going."

Fuji nods.  "I have a plane."

They part ways without saying goodbye.

On the plane to Osaka, Fuji thinks of Seikagu, of being younger than twenty-seven, and of Tezuka.

 ****

 *****

 

It's a celebrity tournament waiting for him in Osaka, and Fuji is grateful that Tezuka didn't mention it.  Fuji remembers playing harder, more dangerously, with passion, for the love of it or for pride--for that thin-lipped smile on Tezuka's face.

Now, he plays for charities, at least once a year.

It makes him angry, somehow, to look into that raging crowd of fans, spectators, and reporters and only see admiration. 

But that's his life now, and Fuji knows how to make do.

He takes a woman named Fujitsubo back to his hotel room after the second day, and they fuck against his bathroom wall. 

He wakes up alone the next morning, and thinks about Tezuka's eyes, ordinary brown, and piercing with challenge.  It wasn't that Fuji wasn't good enough for Tezuka and Tezuka's team--it's just that Fuji can be better, will always be better, is an ever-changing grade of skill, ever-increasing line of ambition.

Fuji is having trouble, now, remembering how exactly that thread of tension felt.

On the third day, he meets Echizen on the field, and Fuji lives up to his reputation.

Echizen is good, and still better; but Fuji is angry and bereaved.

It's not a real match, Fuji knows that, but his panic is as tangible as anything, and it fills up his head and his body.  He is swimming with no land in sight, and all he knows is that this is Tezuka's fault.

Fuji is not so stupid that he doesn't know what's wrong.

 ****

 *****

 

Tezuka never told Fuji about Atobe. 

But there were signs, visible elements, a falter from a sleepless night, the slight, faint-purple bruise along an exposed collarbone, and how the matches between them seemed changed, charged, that much more.  Fuji has and always had eyes.

Tezuka never told Fuji about any of the others, either, though Fuji is sure that there have been others.  Tezuka is imminently desirable.

So it makes sense that there are razors left, sometimes, in the bathroom, that don't belong to either of the people living there. 

Fuji is grateful, in a way, that Tezuka is always polite enough to have company when Fuji is out of town.

But part of him thinks that it's like hiding.

The other part is screaming too loud to think anything at all

 ****

 *****

 

The last two days of the tournament are a blur.  Fuji flattens some movie actress who offers to let him flatten her other ways, as well, and he declines as politely as one can do over too many cups of sake.

The cameras and microphones and engagements and games are blurring together into one faint, artificially green blur.  He takes the early flight out the sixth day, and traces patterns into the windows of the plane.

Fuji has someone take his luggage home, and takes a cab into Tokyo.  He walks up six flights of stairs because the elevators are broken, and knocks on a familiar door.

He smiles, almost real, when Oishi opens it.

 ****

 *****

 

Fuji's not naive enough that homosexuality is strange to him, either. 

He remembers lingering near the offices, waiting for Tezuka to finish the last of that week's paperwork, and hearing hushed tones.  He remembers that it was his second year of high school, six and a half months before Tezuka destroyed his arm forever and took the entrance exam for TouDai.  Fuji remembers leaning back, just enough to see rust-red hair and the line of Oishi's back, and how they were twined together.

Now, Fuji smiles.  "Thank you, Rina-san."

She smiles back blandly, and excuses herself to go tend the dinner.  Oishi doesn't watch her go.

"You think I've made a mistake," Oishi says gently.

Fuji considers.  This is an old conversation.  One he remembers having in pieces many times.  "No," he says. 

Oishi looks away.  "He thought it was just an extension of our tennis."

And Fuji's mind revolts, locks down, and grinds at that.  "Why couldn't it be?"

"There's more to life than tennis," Oishi says, weary. 

"Life is how you choose to live it," Fuji answers. 

Rina wanders back in, the diamond on her finger brighter than her eyes, and asks Fuji if he was joining them for dinner that night.  Fuji declines, like so many other things, and wishes them well on their upcoming nuptials. 

And because Fuji Knows, he says as Oishi is walking him to the train station, "You had your two greatest loves.  That is more than most of us will ever have."

Oishi's gaze is sharp and hollow on Fuji's back, but it doesn't matter, Oishi must have always known.

 ****

 *****

 

Tezuka is reading when Fuji walks through the door, some hideous text that is heavier than Fuji's suitcase, which he sees, already set neatly inside his bedroom door. 

Tezuka looks up, brown eyes tired.  "Did you have a nice flight?"

Fuji shakes off his jacket and leans against the closed door.  "I talked to Oishi."

A pause, and then Tezuka sighs.  The book is shut.  "You shouldn't do that."

"He's my friend.  I'm perfectly entitled."

Tezuka nearly smiles at that, and the book is shifted to the table, and Tezuka folds his hands over the dark blue cover.  Tezuka's hands are beautiful, careworn, well-calloused from years of play.  Fuji knows those hands, has imagined them a million times.

"He's happy with Rina-san," Tezuka says reasonably.  "And it's foolish to give Kikumaru more hope than you can afford," there is an amused pause, "even on  _your_  salary."

Fuji doesn't want to play today. 

"He had everything," Fuji says.  "He had tennis.  He had Eiji."  Fuji doesn't look at Tezuka, he looks out a window instead, but Tokyo is just as complicated, just as dark and tired and strange, beautiful and mismatching as this thing he has been dreaming of since before he understood what he wanted.

"Maybe you don't know him as well as you thought," Tezuka says again, even more gently.  "It's over, Fuji.  It's been two years.  Let it go--Kikumaru has."

Fuji wonders, hatefully, if that razor is proof of that.  If while he was in Kansai or Kagoshima Tezuka invited Kikumaru for whiskey sours and loosed him from memories.  If Tezuka smiled for Kikumaru, like he so rarely smiled for Fuji, and if those hands that Fuji has wanted so desperately and so long stroked down Kikumaru's smooth, strong back.

"I see," he says.  "Did  _you_  help him with that?"

Tezuka's expression is sharp, and grows sharper.

Fuji closes his eyes, and leaves again.

Just as the door slams, he hears Tezuka tell him to wait.

 ****

 *****

 

These are the things that Fuji knows now.

Tezuka is more than just frightening when he's angry: he is glorious and horrible and beautiful, haloed by fury. 

He doesn't shout, never raises his voice above a controlled bark, and he pins Fuji to the wall of the stairwell with just his expression.  Tezuka puts one hand over Fuji's left shoulder and corners him, locks him in, squeezes the edges of the universe so tightly that Fuji is having trouble breathing.

Fuji knows now that Tezuka can stop the world, freeze it in an instant without any magic words. 

And now Fuji knows what they all meant, that strange low thump in his chest, the irritation in the back of his throat, that sore, weary feeling that washed over him when he found things that didn't belong to either of them.  He knows what it meant, all those times he felt the tennis captain--always the leader, Tezuka, and Fuji is already ready to listen, always willing and ready to do--staring at his back.  He knows why Tezuka seems to know everything, hold the world in his eyes.

Now Fuji understands.

Now Fuji knows the taste of Tezuka's mouth, angry and uninhibited, tight against his own and it's a bad kiss--he knows this, too--anger does not a sweet embrace make, but it makes a statement, and Fuji can hear Tezuka, loud and clear.

Fuji gets it now.

He hears the question and he tries to answer as well as he can.

Why did you never say anything?

And Fuji says that he doesn't know.

 ****

 *****

 

It's not perfect, and it never will be.

They're still figuring each other out, but Fuji doesn't find anymore razors that don't belong, and Fuji doesn't talk to women named Fujistubo anymore, either.  Celebrity tennis matches are still an inescapable bane of his life, but there is usually someone waiting for him at the hotel tennis court for a real game after he's piddled his way through a day.

Tezuka's arm can't handle hard games anymore, not like he used to play.  But it's still there, all the pinpoint accuracy and thrilling skill.  Fuji watches Tezuka plow him and he loves it.

Fuji never likes to lose more than when he loses to Tezuka. 

And Tezuka is never more alive than when he is playing tennis.

So Fuji tells him.

They are laying in bed, half-asleep and sore from a long day of tennis and fucking and there's the plane back to Tokyo to worry about in the morning.

Tezuka looks at him from the corner of one dark eye, and says, "Wrong again, Mr. Prodigy."

Fuji wonders what that means until Tezuka kisses him, slow and sweet and so  _good_.

They drift, and Fuji thinks about chance, about fate, and about bittersweet reality.  He thinks about Kikumaru Eiji's wearied smile and about Oishi's bland affection for his fiance and Fuji thinks about this very moment, being here, tangled in cotton sheets and listening to Tezuka breathe.  Fuji thinks how lucky he is.

Fuji's mind is shifting, reorganizing, giving new shape to the world.  Fuji re-remembers, time in retrograde, changing and adapting and fading into a brilliant gold blur as night closes in on him, darkness seeping into the edges of his consciousness until all Fuji feels is tired and all he remembers are the planes of Tezuka's face.


End file.
